


Before - - After

by Robin_Fai



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (Yes. I did get distracted.), Drabble, Feelings, Gen, Pining, Poetry, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21769312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_Fai/pseuds/Robin_Fai
Summary: A random bit of prose poetry about Morse and Joan.Sometimes his heart was not his own.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Comments: 20
Kudos: 22





	Before - - After

_Before…_

Sometimes his heart was not his own. 

Sometimes, when her smile was so bright, he would feel his breath catch in his throat, his heart stutter, his soul sing. When she smiled, he wanted to smile too. His mouth, unused to those patterns, would only quirk in a faint imitation of that wide, easy, stretch. A half smile pulled out of it’s usual downward turn. Like a fish out of water, hooked, dragged into the light of day from the murky waters.

Her eyes whispered secrets, her amusement at the world becoming a contagious kind of joy. He wanted to share in those murmurs, feel the levity she achieved so easily. There was a kind of wonder in the thrill she got from life, he could feel it in his very bones when she looked at him. His own sad eyes would take it all in, drinking in the happiness. Such delight was rare, and lost so easily, like water in the desert. 

He loved the way she danced as she walked, light steps skipping along the pavement, shoes cast carelessly over her shoulder. She was luminescent beneath the hazy streetlights, a beacon of hope in the dark. He was always two steps behind, his own feet heavy with the weight he placed upon them. Elation seems to lift her feet higher than his own could ever aspire to. He follows on anyway. 

Words were easy then. A refuge amidst the chaos of social conventions. With words, he could draw her out, make her smile, make her laugh, make her bite. She doesn’t care about what he says. They walk two paths, so very similar, yet so very far apart.

_...After_

Their paths collide, and then tangle. 

Her steps grow slower, duller. Her eyes become quick and wary. These days her smile is more cynical than bright. 

He is torn between wanting to set her back upon the bright side of the street, and wanting to hold her close, to guard her from the gloom, to keep her. 

His heart becomes a cage. Yet still he cannot cling on to her. She flows from his hold as easily as water through the bars. She is all around him. She fills his every sense. Yet he can never hold her.

He watches as the currents bash and bruise her. Sees the damage leaving marks that no on else looks at. He is all too familiar with such hidden hurts. 

Nothing can prepare him for the way she grows hard to the world. She looks at him now from his own side of the street, and oh how it breaks him. They are so close now, so familiar, and yet always so distant. 

He sees hints of the girl she once was sometimes. Pines for it with that kind of nostalgia that ignores the hard truth. She was no more good, nor kind, then than she is now. She never loved him then. She doesn’t love him now. 

That door is closed. He isn’t sure if he would have her go back to that time before even if she could. Somehow, she seems more real now. The trouble is, from his own level she can hurt him so much more. 

A flicker of hope distracts him now and then. Every time she crushes it. He feels this truth right down to his soul. And yet still… 

Sometimes…. 

Sometimes his heart is not his own.


End file.
